Over the past several years, healthcare plans offered by insurance companies and government-sponsored insurers (collectively referred to herein as insurers) have become exceedingly more complex. This includes situations where a patient may be trying to fill a prescription for a medication or other product. Instead of simply covering the cost of the prescription product, these insurers may require a co-pay from the patient. The co-pay may also be different for certain types of products (e.g., name brand products versus generics). In addition, the insurers may have a deductible that has to be met by the patient and/or the patient's family before the insurer covers the prescription product or covers a greater amount of the prescription product. Furthermore, the insurer may cover some products while denying coverage for other products. Finally, each insurer may have a one or more different sets of rules, co-pay levels, deductible levels, and product coverage groupings depending on the type of coverage being provided to the specific patient.
All of this makes it exceedingly difficult for pharmacists as well as prescribers of medication (e.g., doctors, nurses, nurse-practitioners, or any other person legally permitted to prescribe medication) to know ahead of time what it may cost a patient when products are being prescribed. However, this cost information can be vitally important to provide to the patient ahead of time to help determine the likelihood that the patient will fill all of the prescriptions and be provided the necessary benefit of each prescribed product.